


Safe And Warm

by invoked_duplicity



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Healing, Sleep Deprivation, The gang has some healing to do after returning home from the forest of the nightmare king, They do it with cuddle piles, cuddle piles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:20:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29780220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/invoked_duplicity/pseuds/invoked_duplicity
Summary: Riz can't sleep after coming home from their quest. He's not the only one.
Relationships: Riz Gukgak & Everyone, The Bad Kids & Riz Gukgak, The Bad Kids - Relationship
Comments: 5
Kudos: 33
Collections: Dimension 20 Alphabet 2021





	Safe And Warm

Riz didn’t like sleep before he went on a quest to retrieve the crown of the nightmare king. Sleep is a pointless waste of time and if Riz could have some sort of magical solution for this, he would take it immediately. 

Now, after the events of their spring break though, Riz actively dreads going to sleep. He hates it. 

Hates lying in bed in the dark and thinking about all those things in the forest of the Nightmare King, about dying and coming back to life, about their trip to hell, about Kalina sitting on his chest in the night, threatening him to kill Fabian, about Kristen being torn up from the inside—those pictures follow him into his dreams as well. 

He knows that it’s stupid because the Nightmare King is no more and neither is Kalina, but the dreams haunt him still even after their quest is over and he’s back home in Elmville, where he should feel safe. 

Except now, when he goes into his office, he hangs a sheet over his mirror and when he looks at the floor and sees the scratch marks there he shudders and swallows. 

When he’s lying in his room, from time to time he feels a weight on his chest that’s not really there. 

Sleep and silence and solitude have become his enemies and he doesn’t know how to win this battle. 

After a week of barely sleeping at all, of a degree of caffeine that alarmed his mother to no end, Riz finds himself in Mordred Manor in the living room. Someone pushed most of the furniture out of the way and the entire floor has been covered in mattresses, pillows and blankets. 

All Riz wanted to do was check in with the others to see if they had any plans for the coming weeks, but now he realizes that the inhabitants of Mordred Manor have spent their nights sleeping in this living room together. 

And right now, in the middle of this all, lies the familiar figure of one Fabian Seacaster, snoring lightly with a pillow on his head while Adaine sits next to him, reading, and Ragh seemingly plays a game on his crystal. 

“Oh, hey, Riz, my man”, Ragh says, his usually loud voice surprisingly quiet and he raises his massive hand to wave at Riz. 

“Um—hey guys”, Riz says, unsure what to make of this. “What’s up?”

“Fabian has trouble sleeping at home”, Adaine says and smiles at him, sticks a bookmark between the pages and puts her book to the side. After regarding him for a few seconds she cocks her head. “You look like you haven’t slept at all.”

“Uh—maybe? Sleeping is...”, he gestures vaguely and doesn’t finish the sentence. 

“Hard?”, Ragh offers. 

“Yeah.”

“I mean, dude, feel free to crash here any time. We sent you some messages but you didn’t answer them, so we figured you were not into the whole slumber party thing”, Ragh says and Riz blinks. 

Now that Ragh mentions it, Riz isn’t sure where he left his crystal. And he was too occupied with his own brain and his sleeplessness that he didn’t even realize it was missing. 

“I guess it would be okay to try”, Riz says and steps forward until his feet hit the end of one of the mattresses. Adaine gently pats the mattress next to her and Riz climbs into the middle of the nest made of pillows and blankets. 

“Isn’t it weird to just—I don’t know. Sleep here? While other people do their thing?”, he asks. 

Adaine shrugs. 

“We went on a quest to defeat the King of Nightmares. I feel like we can use all the restful sleep we can get. And it helps to not be alone.”

Riz lies down and immediately remembers how part of his journey through the Nightmare King’s forest was to take a nap. 

He still feels entirely ridiculous about this. 

As someone who helped defeat a damn deity Riz shouldn’t feel as nervous as he does about sleeping. 

Just as he arranges some pillows in a way that seems comfortable to him, Fig and Kristen enter the living room. 

“Oh hey, Riz!”, Kristen says with a wide smile. “Have you decided to join us in our cuddle pile?”

“I guess”, Riz says and shrugs a little helplessly. He’s still not entirely sure if this is going to work, but even while he considers if he should maybe just stay awake until night comes so it won’t be too weird, he feels his eyes drooping. 

At some point, while he dozes off, he hears other people enter the room and he thinks that he can hear Ragh offer his lap as a pillow for Gorgug and Ayda’s voice making sure that it is okay for her to hold onto Adaine’s wrist while she sleeps and a warm presence next to him smells like motorcycle oil and leather and some sort of pretentious aftershave. 

And Kristen is there by his side ruffling his hair while saying “Sweet dreams, Riz.” and Riz feels like maybe it would be more normal to have enough of these people after spending so much time with them for so long, after being in close quarters with them for so long. 

But all he feels is a sense of safety and warmth, something that hugs him like a blanket and says “This wound will heal and these people will help”. 

And Riz sleeps.


End file.
